India TV Fact Check: As the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in 2023 draw near, it's common that many misleading and incomplete information will be circulated on social media. During election periods, there is often a surge in political content and claims. Several misleading and incomplete information are circulated regarding the statements and actions of politicians and political parties. We came across one such video on social media showing police officers lathi-charging women. The video shows police officers using batons on some women. This video is being shared on social media with claims that it is from Madhya Pradesh. However, when we fact-checked the video, we found that it is neither from Madhya Pradesh nor recent.
What is going viral?
This video, shared on social media platform X by various users, shows a male police officer beating several women protesters with a baton. Each user claims that this 14-second video is from Madhya Pradesh. For example, a user with the handle @rajsinghyadav02 shared this video on September 28, 2023, with the caption, "Wow, government and women's safety in the government. Wow police, is this Kansa uncle's police? What action will be taken on this?"
Another user with the handle @realwajidkhan shared this same video on September 27, 2023, with the caption, "See the respect for women by the police of the BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh... both the government and the police are against women." Another user, @Ashok_Kashmir, also shared the video and captioned it with, "Congratulations to Ladli Bahna for the 'Women's Reservation Bill' being passed in Madhya Pradesh, by the police officer of Mama." Here, "Mama" refers to Madhya Pradesh's Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
India TV did fact check
When we used Google Lens to search for some frames from this video, several search results appeared. During this search, we found a news article from Scroll.in. This article was published on September 25, 2019. The headline of the article read, "Watch: Police beat up female Anganwadi Sevika Sahayika Sangh workers at a protest in Ranchi." According to this article, "On September 24, 2019, members of the Jharkhand Police beat up female Anganwadi Sevika Sahayika Sangh workers in Ranchi during a protest. The demonstrators' demands included granting government employee status, social security benefits, raising the upper age limit while granting promotions, and increasing the retirement age to 65 for Anganwadi workers."
After obtaining so much information related to the incident, we conducted a search using keywords to find relevant news articles on Google. During this search, we found another news article on the 'Prabhat Khabar' news website. This article was published on September 24, 2019, and its headline read, "Lathi Charge on Anganwadi Workers Marching to CM Residence, Several Injured."
According to this news, "The police lathi-charged the Anganwadi workers who were going to surround the Chief Minister's residence. Many were injured in the protest. Barricading was put up at the Machli Ghar intersection. The Anganwadi workers claimed that they were agitating peacefully when the policemen started chasing them and started beating them. In the aftermath of the police lathi charge, injured Anganwadi workers sat down at the protest site.
During our investigation, we also found a post by Deepika Pandey Singh, a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in Jharkhand. She had shared this video on September 24, 2019. In her caption, she expressed strong criticism, highlighting that male police officers were brutally beating the unarmed female Anganwadi workers. "Wow, the government and its police, these men in khaki are showing their masculinity on an unarmed helpless woman. Being a man, they are brutally lathi charged on the Anganwadi workers. Chief Minister, this brutality with these Anganwadi workers is because they are demanding their rights."
What came out in the investigation?
In India TV's fact check, we found out that the video is from a 2019 incident in Ranchi, Jharkhand, and not from Madhya Pradesh as claimed by some social media users.
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